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It is a tradition for new parents in Green Bay, Wis., to visit the Packers ticket office not long after their baby has been delivered—the sooner, the better. After all, there are more than 140,000 people on the waiting list for Packers season tickets.
This week provides a rare opportunity for fans who may never get inside the NFL’s football cathedral, Lambeau Field, for a game due to limited ticket availability and soaring secondary market prices. For the first time, the NFL Draft will be hosted in Green Bay.
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Starting on Thursday night, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell will take the stage, set up in Lambeau Field’s parking lot, and announce which players have been selected by NFL teams. Fans will be able to watch from various points around Titletown, the mixed-use development surrounding the stadium, or they can sit in the Lambeau Field bleachers and watch the draft unfold on the jumbotron. The event epitomizes the league’s strategy to move its draft from place to place—after being hosted for nearly 50 years at Radio City Music Hall in New York City—a decision that aims to showcase often overlooked markets and elevate them on the global stage.
“This is Green Bay’s Super Bowl,” Greater Green Bay Convention & Visitors Bureau CEO Brad Toll said in an interview. “It’s the biggest event that we’ll be able to hold.”
Last year, about 775,000 fans visited downtown Detroit for the three-day NFL draft showcase, setting a league record. Green Bay city officials project an attendance of roughly 250,000 this week—not breaking any records, but that’s a major showing for Green Bay, which has a population of about 106,000, making it the smallest market in major U.S. pro sports. Meanwhile, the league isn’t sweating the expected smaller in-person turnout compared to previous draft weekends since it’s essentially a free fan fest; additionally, it plans to track overall media consumption.
“The numbers don’t dictate success,” NFL senior vice president and global head of major events Jon Barker said in a video interview. “We’re not going to select a place to take the draft simply because there’s more people there. … All I want to do is create three days for football fans to come together and celebrate the beginning of a new season. We want to make the experience for those young men—whether they’re walking across that stage or joining us remotely—to be as special as we possibly can.”
Despite flight logistics, rising hotel costs and the potential for undesirable weather conditions with the outdoor northern setting, the league is expecting about 15 first-round prospects on site, including presumptive No. 1 overall pick Miami quarterback Cam Ward and Colorado two-way star Travis Hunter. That would surpass the 13 prospects in Detroit last year.
“For players that are certain they’re going to go in the first round, it’s kind of cool to come to Lambeau Field, a place with such history and so many traditions,” Toll said. “We’re excited to have them here.”
Even though this year‘s draft weekend attendance will be lower than the past 10 years since the NFL moved the event away from New York City, the league believes it is positioned well to bring fan numbers back up with Pittsburgh hosting next year, even if the draftees decide to celebrate in the confines of their homes. Barker says the league has embraced the two different viewing perspectives of seeing players live on site or with their families elsewhere after conducting a fully virtual draft during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
“We really learned that when we did the draft out of the commissioner’s basement,” Barker said. “We were in everyone’s homes—general managers, coaches and prospects. … We’ve all seen the viral pieces of when a kid gets a phone call and wasn’t expecting it, and the family goes crazy. It’s such a great moment, and we’re able to share that.”
With the draft in a different location each year, the NFL looks to present an experience unique to the chosen host region. Green Bay may have some drawbacks from an infrastructure standpoint, but in the bid process, the city focused on the opportunity to highlight one of the most storied franchises in pro sports, highlighted by 13 league titles, along with Green Bay’s roots as a community with small-town charm.
Its folklore extends to being the only NFL team that’s publicly owned while operating as a nonprofit corporation. Without a billionaire at the helm like the other 31 franchises, the ownership structure provides the fans with a unique sense of togetherness, as roughly 530,000 people call themselves shareholders (though none of them receive any financial return for their investment).
Many of those shareholders are expected to be on the ground this week as the league prepares various ancillary events and activations. Along with hanging out inside the 68-year-old Lambeau Field to watch the draft, fans will also have the chance to kick a field goal through the uprights or perform the Lambeau Leap, a Packers tradition where players jump over the end zone wall into the stands to celebrate with fans. And there will be a bike parade on Saturday to commemorate the tradition of Packers players riding bikes with young fans during training camp that dates back to the Vince Lombardi era.
It’s an example of how the league is trying to incorporate each market as part of its programming ideas. Officials from other draft bidding cities, meanwhile, will also be in Green Bay to take notes while there’s plans to do a formal handover to Pittsburgh over the weekend. While the league has already begun preparations for next year’s draft, Green Bay officials are soaking up their moment as their game plan made a decade ago becomes a reality.
“There’s going to be some goosebumps when they light that stage up and the draft is open,” Toll said. “We’ve dreamed about this day for a long time.”
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